Persepolis
Directed and written by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
Starring the voices of Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve and Danielle Darrieux
Classification: 14A
Rating: ***1/2
Persepolis is as modern as tomorrow's headlines and as classic as an ancient myth. It takes two stories that are timeless – the impetuous youth struggling to come of age; the exile displaced by war from a beloved homeland – and weaves them into a single chronicle that is often poignant, sometimes funny and always bluntly honest. The place is Iran, from the late seventies through the nineties, but both the child and the tale could as easily hail from Sierra Leone (read Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone) or from Iraq (see the Baghdad Burning blog), or from those countless other battlegrounds, then and now, that permanently scar the innocent. That's precisely what gives this picture such resonance: By being so specific to one, it's relevant to all.
The one is Marjane Satrapi, who, in collaboration with co-director Vincent Paronnaud, has brought to the screen what she first created in her graphic novels, an autobiographical series drawn in basic black-and-white panels. The film animates those panels the old-fashioned way – no computers, just thousands of inked cells – and that nod to tradition neatly reinforces the ageless nature of the themes, reminding us that we've heard this story before and, sadly, will surely hear it again.
The start is in Tehran, 1978, where young Marjane (voiced by Gabrielle Lopes) lives with her middle-class family, watching through their apartment window as the revolution rumbles up the city streets. She's a willful, tempestuous, curious nine-year-old who, like all kids, drifts along the prevailing social currents, respecting the Shah one moment and excitedly shouting him down the next. Fortunately, her parents (Catherine Deneuve and Simon Abkarian) take pains to lend her, and us, some historical perspective. What's more, her uncle Anouche, an unapologetic democrat, offers a bruised example of politics' recurring tides. A frequent guest of the state, he was jailed and beaten first by the Shah's CIA-trained henchmen, and again by the equally ardent fundamentalists who succeeded them. So, in the back alleys with her little friends, Marjane gleefully plays the local version of cowboys and Indians – I'll be the torturer, you be the tortured.
Then Iraq invades, civil war making way for a common enemy, and the scene skips ahead to 1982, when our girl (voiced by Chiara Mastroianni now) is attending a stricter school and wearing the mandated head scarf. But the head it hides is filled with a teenager's rebellious urges. Beneath her black robe, she proudly sports a punk T-shirt; on the black market, she furtively buys an Iron Maiden tape. Around her, other teenagers, once relegated to the servant classes, have risen to literally take up arms. In the uniform of the fashion police, they brandish their guns, pointing them at women whose scarves have slipped by a shameless inch, or at anyone who dares to keep company with the demon booze. Pushed and pulled by such conflicting forces, Marjane often seeks refuge in the care of her granny (the wonderful Danielle Darrieux), a crusty old secularist who stuffs her bra with sweet-smelling jasmine and her granddaughter with a brand of wisdom that transcends politics: “Keep your dignity and be true to yourself. You always have a choice.”
